News Notes
JCR Releases Safety and Design Book
A not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission, Joint Commission Resources (JCR) has released a new book, Safe by Design: Designing Safety in Health Care Facilities, Processes, and Culture. The publication offers lessons learned from the National Learning Lab, a gathering of healthcare professionals from across the country that explored the issue of safety in hospital design. JCR created the book to help organizations design safety into their facilities by:
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Understanding the development and application of safety design principles, including designing around latent conditions, active failures, design process recommendations, and design processes to enhance safety culture;
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Involving caregivers such as nurses and physicians, architects, and patients in the design and construction of safe care environments; and
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Learning from success by adapting practical and workable safety design strategies from healthcare organizations committed to designing safe environments.
http://healthcaredesi.wpengine.com/SafeDesign
The Center Releases Report on Reducing Nursing and Medication Errors
The Center for Health Design’s newest research report takes a look into the Effect of Environmental Design on Reducing Nursing Errors in Acute Care Settings. Written by members of the CHER Research Committee, the report includes a comprehensive review of empirical literature and interviews with nurses at seven hospitals—four in the Pacific Northwest and three that have been noted as providing enhanced efficiency.
The review and analysis demonstrated that the following environmental variables contribute to work place errors: spatial design, microenvironmental design, ergonomics, noise levels, lighting, color, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Staffing levels, age, and health of workers were among the nonenvironmental variables associated with workplace errors. These variables contributed to errors through workers’ fatigue, stress, disruptions, distractions, and other mediating factors.
http://healthcaredesi.wpengine.com/EnvironmentalDesign
More Online Content and Tools
View floorplans. Many of the design firms and facilities in the September Showcase issue have submitted their floorplans, complete with elevations, landscape plans, and 3-D schematics. View these from the September 2007 issue Web page.
Comment on articles. Have an opinion on an article? Want to add your own design experience to an article? Feel free to post comments at the end of each article.
Start a blog. Have a lot more than just a comment? Then start a blog. This is where the readers control the direction of editorial content. Post article ideas and news or do a weekly log of your experiences with a current project.
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Video Feeds
The Role of Built Environment Factors on Patients
In an example of evidence-based design in action, hospital planners Susan Lipka and Wayne Fischer discuss a research project underway at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The project examines the influence of built environment factors (BEFs) of three newly constructed clinical units on patients, family members/caregivers, staff, and physicians from four multidisciplinary care centers at two time points after moving to the new Ambulatory Clinical Building at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Comparing the results with those from the same measurements in a traditional unit, the goal of this research is to determine the impact of six BEFs—noise levels, pleasant distractions, safety features, wayfinding systems, support spaces, and patient and family member/caregiver sense of control—on perceptions of the clinical units and, eventually, healthcare outcomes.
http://healthcaredesi.wpengine.com/BuiltEnvironment
Wind-Tunnel Testing for Emission Effects
As covered in HEALTHCARE DESIGN’s December 2007 Green Column, the Denver Health Pavilion for Women and Children, which earned a LEED-NC v2.1 Silver for new construction and major renovations, incorporated a number of innovative environmental health strategies. One of which was the testing of where and how the facility’s operating emissions would affect the surrounding location. After building a scale model of the facility and nearby buildings in a wind tunnel, wind engineers Cermak Peterka Petersen, Inc., sent tracer gas through miniature exhaust stacks and tested a range of wind speeds and directions for each exhaust/receptor combination.
